NJ.com: Frank “Pupie” Raia, a real-estate developer and major figure in Hoboken politics for decades, was indicted by a federal grand jury Wednesday and accused of overseeing a cash-for-votes operation during the city’s 2013 municipal race. Prosecutors allege Raia, 67, directed an … Continue reading
Category Archives: chicanery
HuffPost: HuffPost’s April 2016 report investigated the tactics of End Citizens United, a political action committee founded by three former staffers at the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the party’s official organ dedicated to electing Democrats to the House of Representatives. … Continue reading
NYT: A structure unknown even to some of those involved, Floridians for a Fair Shake and 13 other groups around the country are funded and coordinated out of a single office in Washington, with the goal of battering Republicans for … Continue reading
NBC News: When Naim Tyler tweeted a video on Nov. 8, 2016, that showed an alleged voting machine malfunction in favor of Hillary Clinton, he expected some attention. But he didn’t realize what was about to happen. The video he … Continue reading
Here’s the complaint from the newest members of the Fraudulent Fraud Squad. As Adam Smith flags from page 16: Hmm! https://t.co/gYTkyUISiW pic.twitter.com/643MZlkllS — Adam Smith (@asmith83) October 19, 2018 The 11 California counties claim came from Judicial Watch. More … Continue reading
WaPo: The Justice Department on Friday charged a Russian woman for her role in a conspiracy to interfere with the 2018 U.S. election, marking the first criminal case prosecutors have brought against a foreign national for meddling in the upcoming … Continue reading
Fort Worth Star Telegram: Recent charges alleging that four women are part of an organized voter fraud ring on the city’s north side — announced just weeks before the Nov. 6 midterm election — are political moves geared to diminish minority voting in one … Continue reading
KC Star: A conservative activist with Project Veritas posed as an intern with U.S. Sen. Claire McCaskill’s campaign and had access to voter information, according to a stack of documents McCaskill’s lawyer delivered to Attorney General Josh Hawley’s office Friday. … Continue reading
Reuters: Facebook Inc (FB.O) will ban false information about voting requirements and fake reports of violence or long lines at polling stations in the run-up to and during next month’s U.S. midterm elections, company executives told Reuters, the latest effort … Continue reading
Pete Williams and Ken Dilanian for NBC News: The Department of Homeland Security says it’s working to identify who — or what — is behind an increasing number of attempted cyber attacks on U.S. election databases ahead of next month’s … Continue reading
Daily Beast: The midterms are less than a month away. But working groups inside the intelligence community charged with overseeing election security are still trying to finalize plans for countering foreign interference in the 2018 elections, three senior officials involved … Continue reading
NBC DFW: Four women who are accused of targeting elderly voters in 2016 were indicted on 30 felony counts of voter fraud and arrested following an investigation by the office of the Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. The defendants were … Continue reading
NYT: A top Trump campaign official requested proposals in 2016 from an Israeli company to create fake online identities, to use social media manipulation and to gather intelligence to help defeat Republican primary race opponents and Hillary Clinton, according to … Continue reading
Tim Mak for NPR with a fascinating report: Russian social media agitators who pushed pro-gun messages in the United States sometimes copied the language of the National Rifle Association. And sometimes, the NRA copied them. What isn’t clear is whether … Continue reading
Deep NYT dive: For many Americans, the Trump-Russia story as it has been voluminously reported over the past two years is a confusing tangle of unfamiliar names and cyberjargon, further obscured by the shout-fest of partisan politics. What Robert S. … Continue reading
Steven Rosenfeld: According to two now-retired senior North Carolina State Board of Elections and Ethics Enforcement (BOE) officials — Gary Bartlett, its former executive director, who served for 20 years in that post, and Marshall Tutor, his top investigator — the federal … Continue reading
Hansi Lo Wang, who has been the go-to reporter on Censusgate, with this NPR report. … Continue reading
Reuters: President Donald Trump plans to sign an executive order as soon as Wednesday that will slap sanctions on any foreign companies or people who interfere in U.S. elections, based on intelligence agency findings, two sources familiar with the matter … Continue reading
Looks like the North Carolina US Attorney’s Office also subpoenaed the state DMV. The subpoena is here. Among the other information sought: DMV voter registration documents (including from citizens) for individuals not born in the US and documents (including from … Continue reading
No. But it’s interesting to hear Tucker Carlson get angry about efforts to help Latinos vote. … Continue reading
Hansi Lo Wang, who’s been all over this issue, chronicles the memory loss. … Continue reading
LA Times: President Trump has agreed to give up his right to pursue millions of dollars in damages against Stormy Daniels in a move to kill litigation over an illegal payoff to the adult-film star. The maneuver marks a sharp … Continue reading
NYT: Voters in Texas received a mysterious text message on Wednesday, one that purported to be from a campaign volunteer for Beto O’Rourke, the Democrat who is running against Ted Cruz for Senate this fall. “We are in search of volunteers to … Continue reading
WaPo: A Richmond Circuit Court judge on Wednesday ordered independent candidate Shaun Brown removed from the ballot in Virginia’s 2nd District congressional race, finding that her qualifying petition was tainted by “forgery” and “out and out fraud.” Many of those … Continue reading
WaPo: Rep. Scott W. Taylor (R-Va.) sat in the backroom of his campaign office in a strip mall. Mini-blinds closed, a modest “Scott Taylor U.S. Congress” sign taped to the door was all that identified his reelection headquarters. Inside, a … Continue reading
NYT: An American lobbyist who worked with Russian and Ukrainian oligarchs pleaded guilty on Friday to failing to register as an agent of a foreign power and disclosed to prosecutors that he helped a Russian political operative and a Ukranian … Continue reading
Kentucky.com: Longtime Kentucky Democratic operatives Jerry Lundergan and Dale Emmons were indicted by a federal grand jury in Lexington Friday for allegedly making illegal contributions to the 2014 U.S. Senate campaign of Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes and then … Continue reading
Press release: Robert J. Higdon, Jr., United States Attorney for the Eastern District of North Carolina today announced that nineteen foreign nationals were charged with, among other crimes, voting by alien for their actions prior to and on November 8, … Continue reading
Fredreka Schouten for USA Today. … Continue reading
Very nice explainer from Trevor Potter in WaPo. … Continue reading
Brad Smith writes for WaPo. See also this piece at Reason. I disagree with Brad, for reasons I’ve given most recently in this Slate piece from last week and my ELB Podcast with Bob Bauer. … Continue reading
AJC: The elections consultant who proposed closing most voting locations in a majority African-American rural Georgia county has been fired ahead of a vote Friday on consolidating precincts. The proposal to shutter seven of the county’s nine precincts before the Nov. … Continue reading
Yesterday I suggested David Pecker might be next to take a plea deal, but it turns out he got something better: immunity. and it looks like he’s implicating the president (from the WSJ): David Pecker, the chief executive of the … Continue reading
Does Michael Cohen’s guilty plea to campaign finance violations implicate the President in criminal campaign finance activity? What about the defenses that the President has raised to these charges? Did Trump or the Trump campaign violate the prohibition on soliciting … Continue reading
Peter Overby for NPR. … Continue reading
Paul Ryan for Just Security. … Continue reading
USA Today reports. … Continue reading
Sam Levine: Officials in a majority-black Georgia county accused of trying to close almost all polling places to make it harder for black people to vote claimed last week that the locations couldn’t be used because of accessibility problems for people … Continue reading
CNN: The Democratic National Committee contacted the FBI on Tuesday after it detected what it believes was the beginning of a sophisticated attempt to hack into its voter database, a Democratic source tells CNN. The DNC was alerted in the … Continue reading
Kira Lerner with a must-read: A majority-black county in rural Georgia announced a plan last week to close seven of its nine polling places ahead of the November election, claiming the polls cannot continue to operate because they are not compliant with … Continue reading
CNN: Republican Congressman Duncan Hunter and his wife, Margaret, routinely — and illegally — used campaign funds to pay personal bills big and small, from luxury vacations to kids’ school lunches and delinquent family dentistry bills, according to a stinging … Continue reading
I have written this piece for Slate. It begins: For the first time since the Trump presidency began, President Donald Trump is in some real legal jeopardy, providing potential grounds for his eventual impeachment, if not indictment. Most people watching … Continue reading
WaPo: A group affiliated with the Russian government created phony versions of six websites — including some related to public policy and to the U.S. Senate — with the apparent goal of hacking into the computers of people who were … Continue reading
News and Observer: The state Republican Party executive director raised the possibility that state Supreme Court justices could be impeached if they ruled against legislative leaders in a lawsuit over constitutional amendments. Dallas Woodhouse made the remarks at an NC … Continue reading
WaPo: Nelson and Rubio warned Florida election officials to be on high alert for Russian cyber-intrusions. We take no issue with their July 2 letter. Nelson, however, went on to make a specific and alarming claim several times: that Russia … Continue reading
The deposition will help sort out whether DOJ really wanted citizenship info to help bring (non-existent) Section 2 Voting Rights lawsuits or this was a pretext to give Wilbur Ross what he wanted for other nefarious reasons. Court order: Given … Continue reading
Jame Sample for NBC Think: In West Virginia, Justice Robin Davis spent an absurd $500,278.23 in taxpayer dollars on renovating her office alone. Mind you, Davis is the same jurist who, through her husband, sold a $1.3 million Lear Jet to an attorney … Continue reading
New Brennan Center report: Cyberattacks pose a growing threat to our election infrastructure, and while efforts to prevent these attacks are critical, it is as important to ensure preparations are in place to quickly and effectively recover if those efforts … Continue reading
Rolling Stone: FBI agents in California and Washington, D.C., have investigated a series of cyberattacks over the past year that targeted a Democratic opponent of Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA). Rohrabacher is a 15-term incumbent who is widely seen as the most pro-Russia and pro-Putin … Continue reading